Starry, starry night

Melbourne sweltered through an uncomfortable 42C (107.5F) day today. Even as I write this at 11pm the temperature has only dropped to 35C, and in parts of the country there have been serious bushfires today that have been fueled by strong winds. Black Saturday isn’t far from most peoples’ minds today.

The winds also cleared out all traces of cloud over Melbourne, so it turned out to be a nice night to stand on my driveway and take photos of the stars. I’ve signed up for a NASA alert every time the space shuttle is visible from my city (sign up here, it’s free!) and with a sighting scheduled for tonight I decided to finally break in the tripod that Tim gave me for Christmas.

The space station zooms by quickly, so I only had a few minutes to grab my shots. The photos below are 30 second exposures and if you know your stuff you’ll be able to spot Orion too.

It blows my mind that there are actual people living on that space station, zooming all around the planet. What an experience that must be.